


that storm will break

by quantumoddity



Category: Nightrunner Series - Lynn Flewelling
Genre: Alec and Seregil as empty nesters, Comfort, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:27:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28618782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumoddity/pseuds/quantumoddity
Summary: It seems to be a perfect morning but Alec thinks something might be bothering his Seregil.
Relationships: Alec í Amasa/Seregil í Korit
Kudos: 6





	that storm will break

It felt like so long since a day had been this perfect. 

The inn below their home was closed for the day, leaving them fending for themselves for lunch. Which, given how long they’d taken to get out of bed, had turned into breakfast. The day outside was bitterly cold and hard with frost but inside, everything was bathed in buttery lamplight and the fires roared. It was exactly where Alec wanted to be during a bitter Rhíminee winter day. 

And, even better, Seregil was in a fine, high mood. Alec had woken up with his talí’s lips pressing lightly against his own, his hands pulling him close and the sound of his low laughter. It had been so long, he’d almost forgotten how much he loved that sound. They’d tumbled together until the sun would have been high in the sky, could it have made it past the slate grey clouds, the smiles never leaving their faces. 

Though Alec watched him carefully, Seregil was still grinning and joking, in his oversized sleep shirt and very little else. Apparently seized with some cheerful energy, he flitted around the kitchen while his talímenios cooked, sitting on the counter and swinging his legs one moment and slipping behind him to squeeze his hips the next, swiping eggs from his hands when he wasn’t looking and kissing the back of his neck. Alec laughed and joked along with him as if it were any normal day, while his eyes stayed as alert for any change as they’d been for signs of prey in the woods. 

Eventually, he nudged him aside with his hip, smiling, “Unless you want me to burn myself on this pan, quit being a nuisance and go do something useful like slice up some bread. Even you can’t burn the kitchen down doing that.”

“That sounds like a challenge, my love,” Seregil grinned back, stealing one last kiss to his cheek before moving off to do as he was asked, if only because he was as hungry as Alec was and eager to get breakfast on the table. 

As he set to carving thick slices off the loaf they’d bought yesterday, ready for the bacon currently crisping in the pan, Alec stole him another glance. He knew his lover being so bright and cheerful shouldn’t have made him suspicious but he couldn’t help it. Any sudden change in Seregil’s behaviour usually meant he was hiding some hurt that he wasn’t ready to share or had made some plan he knew his talí wouldn’t like. 

But in the last few days, his hurt had been plain to see. 

“We’re in good spirits today?” Alec ventured, keeping his tone light. 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Seregil stopped singing the bawdy little ditty he’d been halfway through to answer him, “No jobs for Lord Seregil, the Rhíminee Cat or the Watchers. The whole place entirely to ourselves. Nothing to do but hide from the weather in the arms of my sweet Alec and ravage him in several of my favourite ways.”

Alec knew his cheeks were colouring, he didn’t need to glance at his reflection, “Of course. It’s just good to see, love.”

Seregil made a non committal noise and launched back into his song right from where he’d left off, doing a sprightly little two step in place as he did. Alec shook his head gently and turned back to their breakfast. Perhaps this was just how his love dealt with things like this. After all, this was new to both of them. 

As soon as his tavern song ended, on a clever little turn of phrase involving a male body part and a trout, Seregil picked up into another, a sea shanty this time that Alec could remember him picking up from some sailors. Then a bright reel from a country dance, then something in Aurënfaie he must have known since he was a child, then an almost sickeningly sweet love ballad, putting on a humorous falsetto to properly sing as a damsel in distress. As he toasted bread and buttered it, piling up far more than they’d really need, Seregil ran through a repertoire that would have made any performer on the Street of Lights envious. 

By the time he was setting the full plates down on the table, Alec had tears of laughter in his eyes and had forgotten any worry he’d ever had.

“Come on, now,” he rapped his talímenios lightly on the elbow with his spoon, “Your performance can continue after you’ve actually got some food into you.”

Seregil stuck his tongue out at him, though he kept singing as he carried his plate of toast to join the rest of the fine breakfast gathering on their dining table, plucking another song out of his head from the many he kept there. 

_ “I gave my love a cherry _

_ That had no stone. _

_ I gave my love a chicken _

_ That had no bone. _

_ I told my love a story _

_ That had no end. _

_ I gave my love a baby _

_ With no crying…” _

Alec smiled, putting their dented tin tea service together on a tray. He remembered that song too, one of Seregil’s favourites. He liked the riddle aspect of it and the lilting melody, the playful joke of it all that unravelled over the course of a few simple verses. It was one he’d often hum without thinking as he worked. 

He looked over at Seregil, still swaying lightly on the balls of his bare feet and singing as he swept up an old, chipped vase they kept on the counter and started filling it with flowers he plucked from the bush outside the window. Maybe Alec had been wrong to worry about him so much. 

_ “How can there be a cherry _

_ That has no stone? _

_ And how can there be a chicken _

_ That has no bone? _

_ And how can there be a story _

_ That has no end? _

_ And how can there be a baby _

_ With no-” _

Alec had his back to Seregil so he didn’t see it happen but he jumped a mile as the vase shattered on the tile. When he whirled around, Seregil was standing in the middle of the kitchen, face tight and hands shaking delicately, still shaped in the air to hold the flowers that had tumbled to the floor and now lay in a spreading pool of water around his feet. 

And Alec didn’t need to ask why. 

The song was one of Seregil’s favourites. He’d sung it so many times, enough that Alec had learned the words simply by absorbing them, even though that particular lullaby had never made it up north. Seregil had sung it as he’d worked on locks, he’d hummed it as he’d dressed in the morning, he’d whistled it as he read, sprawled on the sofa. But no matter where he was or what he was doing, when he’d reached that part in the song, he had stopped. For the last twenty five years, he’d never finished the song. 

Because the last verse belonged to their daughter. 

At that point, whether it was from the next room over or from the other side of the garden where she was drawing back her bow or the opposite chair in the library, Adzri would take up the tune in her high, sweet voice. She’d answer the riddles, she’d twist the words into their clever little patterns, she’d answer her father’s questions. She was the love in the song, their song that they’d always sung together. 

But their daughter wouldn’t be able to answer from halfway across the ocean. 

“Oh Seregil…” Alec moved to hold him, carefully stepping around broken crockery. 

“She’s been gone for weeks and I still...I still just expected her to join in…” his talí whispered faintly, eyes fixed on nothing. 

Alec folded him into his arms and, for a terrifying moment he thought he’d be greeted by only the still, emotionless mask Seregil had been wearing since their daughter set sail, the careful nothingness that had been worse than any grief. But then finally he felt the slighter man mould to his embrace, returning it fiercely as he started to sob. 

Alec knew his agony, of course, he was Adzri’s father too. As her fine ship had pulled away from Rhíminee into a fresh dawn, it had felt as if half of his heart were being pulled away with it. The daughter he’d loved and protected since before she was even born, the perfect answer to his prophecy, going off into the big wide world to conquer it as he’d always known she would. 

They’d dreaded it since the day she’d proven to have every ounce of her father’s wanderlust and bravery, since she’d eagerly climbed trees to the topmost branches to see the world laid out before her, since she’d begged just one more story of their travels every bedtime, since she’d explored every inch of the vast city she called home. They’d known even such as Rhíminee couldn’t hold their Adzri for long. It was why they’d bought her the ship she was currently off exploring who knew where in, presenting it to her on the day she’d come of age. It was why they’d gathered maps and books on far off places for the last year. It was why they hadn’t been surprised when she’d come to them and asked their leave to take her little ship and it’s little crew and go see a new shore. 

Though it didn’t make saying goodbye any easier. Particularly for Seregil, to whom Adzri had been a shadow since the day she was born. 

“She won’t be gone forever,” Alec murmured, stroking Seregil’s hair, “And she promised to write to us, whenever she could.”

“I know,” Seregil’s voice caught miserably, “I know, I know it’s what’s best for her, I know it’s what she’s always wanted so why...why am I being such a fool about it all?”

“Talí…” Alec groaned, drawing back so he could hold Seregil’s sodden face in his hands and look him in the eye, “You’re not being a fool. You’re being a father.” 

Seregil sniffed and sighed deeply, “I miss her.”

“So do I,” Alec returned softly, “And that’s alright. It’s really our job when you think about it. To miss our girl and worry about her terribly and wish she’d never even laid eyes on the damned ocean, all while being so happy for her.”

Seregil managed a laugh, if a wet one, his old crooked smile coming back, “I suppose it is...by the Four, the world isn’t ready for her, is it?”

Alec chuckled, wiping tear tracks from his lover’s face with a gentle thumb, “It was never going to be.”

“And she has one of the most promising magical students in a generation as her field wizard, after all. What could harm her?”

Seregil’s grin gew at that, in rueful acknowledgement. Alec didn’t think Thero was ever going to forgive them for the bond between their daughters and all it had gotten his girl into, the least of which was this tour around the neighbouring countries. At that, Thero had at least been grateful she’d get some further education out of it. 

“Don’t ever let Adzri hear you say that,” Seregil smiled, leaning into Alec’s hand, “She’d go in a huff all over being perfectly capable of defending herself with her bow and sword.”

“Ah well, no one can pout quite like our little girl,” Alec raised an eyebrow, “Apart from her father, of course.”

Seregil pulled a face, grey eyes dropping to the poor flowers on the floor, “I have been...unhelpful since she left. I’m sorry, I...I know you don’t like it when I keep what’s in my heart to myself. I should have grown out of it by now.”

“Only because I want it to be less of a burden when you share it with me,” Alec murmured, leaning in and kissing his cheek, still tasting a little salt, “But you do, in your own time, and I can live with that.” 

“I do adore you, talí…”

“And I adore you.” 

Some of his old mischief returned to Seregil’s eyes as they found his lover’s again, the arms around him less a drowning man clinging to some anchor and now more purposeful, a hand slipping down to cup his ass, “You do make having an empty nest more bearable.” 

Alec smirked, tapping his chest in admonishment, though inside he was heaving a long, hard won sigh of relief to see his talí’s more genuine smile, “Our breakfast is getting cold.” 

“Fine, a refuel then,” Seregil hummed, showing him just a shade of that famous pout as he gave his backside a last squeeze and moved away to the table. 

Alec joined him with a roll of his eyes, taking the seat beside him even though there were other options. And yes, the one empty chair across from them was a sad sight, but it was a bearable ache now. 

“And who knows,” Seregil hummed, picking up his knife and fork as Alec took a deep drink of tea that he’d been gasping for since he’d woken up, “Maybe we could start looking at making our empty nest a little less empty?”

The way Seregil cackled as Alec choked on his tea and spluttered it across the entire table told him that his talímenios was back to his old self, for real. 

And that their days would never be the same. But they could still be perfect. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment if you liked this!


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